Sharon Alvarenga of The Dessert Pantry knows how to get festive with these Mardi Gras masks! Follow her instructions to recreate these impeccable cookies for your Fat Tuesday party.

*

Mardi Gras Mask Decorating Tutorial

The annual celebration of Fat Tuesday is around the corner (February 9th to be exact!), and if you can’t make it down to New Orleans for the celebration, don’t worry! Throw a party, invite some friends, and create your own Mardi Gras cookies to serve! You can celebrate right in the comfort of your own living room. These sugar cookies are easy to make so you can show off your mad baking and decorating skills!

A quick tip! When making your sugar cookie recipe…I’ve found that most recipes ask you to place the dough in the refrigerator (as you should! It will help the dough stay as is while baking), and roll it into a good size ball then wrap it in plastic wrap before placing it in the refrigerator. I’ve found it EASIER to roll out the dough about ¼ inch thick BEFORE placing it into the refrigerator. I’ll place my large ball on parchment paper, add another piece of parchment on top, and then roll it out that way. It makes it SO MUCH EASIER to use when ready. I simply take it out of the refrigerator, cut out my shapes, and away I bake! I don’t struggle with rolling out cold dough.

So, once you have your sugar cookie dough ready, take your handy dandy CookieCutterKingdom cutter and cut out your dough. I usually use 3 inch cutters, but order your cutter size based on how intricate you want your cookies to be.

After your dough is baked, let it cool down before you begin decorating. I would recommend letting it sit for at least an hour before you get to work. Once your cookie is cool, take your Color Decorating Pens to outline the design of your cookie. Make sure to use the color you will be icing with so that it can match won't not show through. You don’t want to use a black food marker when you will be using yellow icing you know? It will be visible through the cookie!

So once you have your outline all set up, you will then take your royal icing and follow the outline you made with your gourmet food pen.

Once you have outlined with royal icing, add in additional icing for flooding. Be careful to not add TOO much icing because you don’t want it to overflow. You want just enough to fill in and spread evenly for a nice and consistent surface.

You will then take your Scribe Tool (or toothpick) and gently move around the icing to fill in the areas and distribute it evenly. The icing will settle among itself. Let the icing dry overnight, or for at least 8 hours. I try to give ample time for the royal icing to dry. This allows for your next ‘layer’ to sit nicely on top and not ‘blend’ into the first layer of icing. You want these layers to remain distinct so that the detail is fully captured and visible on the cookie.

Once your cookie has dried, on to detailing! (Note: For this tutorial I used the same 12 second consistency royal icing for detailing as I did with flooding. This worked great for me on this project, but it doesn’t always work great for other cookie projects. If the detail you are applying to your cookie is more intricate, then you will need to go with stiffer royal icing.)

I used green royal icing to help the yellow color pop out. Plus, Mardi Gras colors do tend to run with purple, yellow and green. Using Decorating nozzle #2, I slowly add the detail to the cookie. Take your time on this section because impatience leads to mistakes. TRUST ME! You want to take your time placing that first layer of royal icing, and then adding the decorative touches so that your cookie look great.

You can use the scribe tool (or toothpick) to very lightly mark along the first layer of royal icing the areas that you are looking to decorate. This helps keep your hand steady and give you a visual as to where you are going to place the detail. I’ve found this to be SUPER useful when I first started out. If you have a steady hand and a great artistic eye than you might not need to do this extra step!

Once you are done decorating, let that set for a few hours (4 to 6 at least) to ensure no smears or cookie casualties. You can store the cookies in air tight containers for a week or so to keep fresh. If you layer them, make sure to place a piece of parchment paper in between each cookie.

Thank you for taking the time to read through my tutorial, and I wish you luck on your Mardi Gras cookies!